If there was any doubt, it’s over: António Costa and the PS majority visit a country; contradictions are common. In the center is a deputy, Rui Tavares, from Livre who now sees António Costa as the only example in parliament of a “separate” and “responsible” opposition. The parliamentary debate on the state of the nation this Thursday revealed an ocean of irreconcilable differences between the two sides of the barricade.

The Prime Minister (Prime Minister) opened the debate precisely by opposing the opposition, saying that there is only “one priority here: the fight against the government and the solutions it proposes”. And he even admitted that “we don’t always succeed”, “sometimes we make mistakes” – but without “never giving up to find solutions”.

So “Portugal did not stagnate, Portugal did not enter recession, Portugal did not return to stagflation” and, on the contrary, “had the third highest growth in the European Union in the first quarter and growth forecasts for this year already vary between 2.4 and 2.7%”. And “employment is at an all-time high, with 4.9 million people in work; and inflation has fallen from 10.1% in October to 3.4% in June”.

Message to the chairman

In other words: “Portugal this year was not the country that the opposition predicted, that they passionately announced it would be and that – let’s be clear! And the oppositions “are nothing and criticize everything”, always failing in their example: “Throughout the year they said that the Iberian electricity mechanism would raise prices, that the reopening of the regulated gas market was irrelevant, that the reduction in fuel taxes was illusory”, while “the reality is that with the package of measures adopted by the government, the price of energy products fell by 18.8% year-on-year in June”, with ASAE also confirming that “the price of the 46 products subject to the VAT reduction has already fallen by 10% “We will continue to govern with people in mind, attentive to problems and focused on finding solutions, as we have done throughout this parliamentary year, to protect the income of Portuguese families,” promises, leaving a message to the president of the republic in the middle: “Political stability was the option of the Portuguese a little over a year ago. And it is this option for stability that guarantees the continuity of transformative action, the fulfillment of the commitments with the Portuguese, the implementation of essential reforms for the modernization of the country and the improvement of the quality of life of the Portuguese.”

Because – he added – “for us Portugal is only better if the Portuguese are better”. And “if today the Portuguese pay two billion euros less IRS; if wage increases go beyond what has been agreed in social negotiations, if social benefits and pensions rise above inflation; if inflation is already falling, especially in prices of energy and in many foods; so we can say that the Portuguese are doing better, that the country is improving”.

What followed the prime minister’s initial intervention was radically hostile.

Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, parliamentary leader of the PSD, challenged Costa to leave the “state of denial” he is in.

“If the Portuguese experienced socialist bankruptcy with José Sócrates, the Portuguese suffer socialist impoverishment with António Costa,” he began by saying. And then he pointed as examples to the doubling of benefits of the Portuguese with housing loans, the “decrease in real wages by 4% in 2022” or the fact that half of pensioners cannot buy all the medicines they need.

In the meantime, he challenged Costa that he left without any answer, regarding the judicial investigations into the PSD accounts at the time of Rui Rio: “The PSD does not condone impunity, but does not hesitate to uphold the principles of the rule of law. happened last week was very serious, a reversal of what the roles between justice and politics should be, several people, from different political circles, have already put themselves at the forefront of this battle, one person is missing, and that is Vexa, Mr. Prime Minister.”

Miranda Sarmento also accused the government of increasing taxes but without any correspondence in public services, which he considered “collapsed”. “You play a trick, with both hands you take the Portuguese out of the tax and with one hand, a socialist hand, you give back a little bit,” he said, still complaining about the “businesses, layoffs and mess” of the last year.

Finally, he defended that his party is already an alternative to the government and that, contrary to what the Prime Minister said in his opening speech, “you can’t say that the PSD is not proposing measures”, listing several in areas such as housing , health or taxes. “They may disagree with everything, but they cannot deny that the PSD has made an important contribution to the life of the Portuguese and the economic development of the country.”

Then André Ventura, from Chega, intervened in the style that characterizes him. First, he said successive internal affairs in government are symptomatic of “encroachment on public space”. And then he concluded by saying that Costa “wants to make this country the biggest alternative house in Europe”. The Casa de Alterne’s rebuke earned him a reprimand from the President of the Assembly of the Republic (“an absolutely outrageous expression in a parliament”) and Costa the obvious answer: what the Chega leader said, by itself represents the “illustration of the degradation” that Ventura said he was censoring.

However, at the same time, he did not stop playing with the leader of Chega, because he always asked ministers to resign. He did so by talking about the dismissals (“I deeply regret”) of Marta Temido (Health) and Pedro Nuno Santos (Infrastructures) – alleged proto-candidates for his succession in the leadership of the PS – and said that he had already had noticed that now, after leaving the government, they are “much more popular”.

Rui Rocha, from IL, also referred to the internal crises in the government, accusing the prime minister of “failing to guarantee stability” and also “in the fight against corruption”. “These are not cases and cases, Prime Minister, as you like to say, these are cases and problems at the most because Minister Cravinho also owes an explanation to the country for everything that happens in the defense field and that is why these cases and cases are not stability,” said he.

On the left, Pedro Filipe Soares, a blocking parliamentary leader, annoyed Costa when he said that “what the prime minister came here today is a lie” about the fact that we have a more qualified economy today. “In the past year, 105,000 graduate jobs have been destroyed,” he charged.

The PCP, in turn, through its parliamentary leader, Paula Santos, spoke of the “path of general impoverishment of the population”, marked by “unbearable contradictions”, that is being followed. “Increased inequality, injustice, exploitation, violation of labor and union rights, deterioration of public services, low public investment, weakening of the productive system, new privatizations: this is the reality that the government, no matter how hard it tries, cannot hide,” he said. Portugal – he said – experiences “unbearable contradictions”, with differences between the “outrageous profits of economic groups and the daily reality of millions of citizens”, or between “laughable statistics” and “propaganda of correct bills” and the “exacerbation of the problems of the country” and “to restore the purchasing power of workers and pensioners, to invest in public services, there is never money, but there is never a lack of new benefits and tax breaks (…) or thousands of euros of public funds and divert public resources into economic funds”.

Inês Sousa Real, from the PAN, would urge Costa on the idea that the Portuguese “do not live in the pink world of the PS”, and the effects of inflation cannot be ignored. And António Costa would answer, “If there weren’t problems to solve, look, I’d be doing something else with my life.”

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